


Sticking Point

by Ravenshell



Category: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TV 2012), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - All Media Types
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-14
Updated: 2021-01-14
Packaged: 2021-03-18 12:13:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28743030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ravenshell/pseuds/Ravenshell
Summary: Don gets his shell wedged in a window.  April tries to extract him while reminiscing about some of their earlier situations.
Relationships: Donatello & April O'Neil (TMNT), apritello - Relationship
Comments: 2
Kudos: 21





	Sticking Point

**Author's Note:**

> I've had two thirds of this story sitting, waiting to be finished for the better part of three years or more; it's about time to whip some of the WIPs out. PS - I hate clips shows, yet I realize this is the second clips-show format story I've done, minus actual scenes and just talking about them.

Sticking Point

“Etanercept?”

The teenage girl scanned down the shelves of the darkened pharmacy, while her turtle companion did the same. Rather than sensible alphabetical order or by type or brand, this drugstore seemed to be organized by the categories ‘most frequently ordered’ and ‘everything else’, and searching out the drugs Don needed to stock their own array of medicines with had quickly become a chore. Given that they needed to hit up different drug dispensaries in the area or risk detection, this one had been latest on their list, but judging by its shoddy organization, wasn’t likely to be a future frequent stop. 

Aided only by a penlight, April ran the small white circle across the rack in front of her. “Found it!” she called out as she snatched a bottle.

“Epinephrine… Oh, that’s right in front of me… Annnnd, Lisdexamphetamine.”

“Got it,” the redhead announced as she added the bottle to her satchel.”

The purple-banded turtle grinned over at her, baring the gap in his teeth. “Thanks again for volunteering to come with… This would have taken at least three-point-eight-seven times as long if it was just me sorting through this mess… And five-point-one-three, no, eight, if it’d been Mikey!”

“Not a problem,” she chuckled. “What would the stats on Raph and Leo be?”

He laughed, starting some mental calculations. “Given Raph would grab anything and I’d have to double-check if it was the right thing or not, probably four point-oh-four-five times, and Leo, who would constantly be double-checking every detail of everything and second-guessing me on things, maybe as little as two-point-one-seven-repeating.”

She peered around the rack to grin at him. “So I’ve got the best stats?”

He leaned across the counter to stare deeply into her eyes. “You’ve got the hottest set of stats I’ve ever seen,” he admitted soppily, a moment later, his eyes going wide and cheeks turning red as he realized his unintended double-entendre. “I—I—I mean, you’re pretty statitstical… I mean…” He huffed in frustration and turned away. “I’m just gonna… Yeah…” She had disappeared back behind the rack again, but he could hear her trying to stifle her giggles. He cringed at his own awkwardness.

Doing his best to recover some poise, Don folded up his list, tucking it into his belt. “That’s about everything… I want to grab some capsule ends here and a couple of over-the-counters downstairs; I’ll meet you outside.”

“All right, me and my perky stats will be waiting.” There was more than a hint of ‘bedroom’ in the side-eye she cast back at him as she shimmied back through the narrow window they’d entered through, onto the lower roof of the adjoining shop. She gave an intentional swing of her hip as she left. He stared slack-jawed after her, and the bag of capsule ends slipped from his hand, a number of them toppling out all over the floor. Don tsked and made haste in picking them all up and heading downstairs to collect cold remedies and pain relievers, vaulting back up the stairs three at a time, using his long legs to his advantage. He wasn’t about to keep her waiting.

He eyed the window, and could just make her out, looking around to make sure they weren’t spotted, but clearly watching for him to emerge. Smirking to himself, he bent his legs a couple of times as a warm-up. She was perfectly positioned and would totally be impressed when he did a beautiful dive and roll through that window. 

“Here is Hamato Donatello, preparing for the window-diving competition,” he commentated to himself in a low voice and wrenching his neck around to stretch it. “This will be his hundred and fourteenth victory, if he can make this jump and stick the landing, winning the gold and the heart of the young woman outside. It looks like he’s ready; he steps up to the line… and…”  
Don ran five graceful long-legged paces, stuck his arms out in diving formation before him, and leapt.

The idea was to shoot through the window, tuck and roll into a somersault as he landed, and spring back to his feet in one smooth motion. 

He never got that far.

With a horrible _scooch_ of a hard object rubbing across wood, Don’s momentum was abruptly arrested as his shell met both sides of the narrow window frame, his limbs rag-dolling on impact as his head whiplashed forward, then back, into the rim of his carapace. He tried to regain his bearings as white dots danced before his eyes, but he couldn’t manage to right himself. For a second, it seemed like he was swimming mid-air. Adding insult to injury, the window slid loose, giving him a hard rap on the shell. “…ow…” he managed, allowing himself to dangle limp.

April gasped, running over to him. “Donnie! Oh my gosh, what happened??”

“Oh… uh… nothing,” he tried to deflect, mumbling bashfully. “I just… uh… got stuck coming out the window… at speed…” He reached back to put his hands against the outer wall to push himself forward, but found he didn’t have a good angle to gain any force.

The girl looked at him skeptically. “Why didn’t you just step out like the way we went in?”

Donnie swung his legs forward, scrabbling about, hoping to get some traction with his feet, but only managed to touch the window sill with his toes. He huffed. “Could we maybe skip the why for now and just, maybe, try to get me loose?”

“Right.” She set a hand on either side of his carapace and started shoving, groaning with the effort as she threw her whole weight into it. Don did his best to avert his eyes from the female chest suddenly directly in his face.   
  
If he was blushing before from this debacle, his cheeks felt like they would ignite shortly at this point. To save some of April’s dignity, he retracted his head further and further into his shell until he could no longer evade the encroaching boobage cutting off his air supply. “Uh, April—“ he began, just as she threw her whole body into the shove, pressing his face into her breast, he continued, “—this isn’t working,” from between the fleshy appendages.

She gasped and backed off, likewise blushing, as she realized her error. “Sorryyy…”

“It’s, uh… it’s fine,” he stammered. “Extenuating circumstances.”

She shook her head. “I’m not gonna be strong enough to push you out, I think… I’ll call the guys—“

Don let out an involuntary yelp, and she took her finger away from the call button on her phone. His distraught look broke her heart, and his eyes reflected the thought of all three of his brothers mocking him for this incident for the rest of his life. His gaze pleaded with her silently, though he already seemed to have surrendered, crestfallen, to that eternal shame. “Or… we could try some other things first…” she conceded.

A breath Donnie hadn’t realized he was holding left his lips in a rush. “Thanks, April.”

“It’s okay… I’m sure we can figure this out without them,” she said with an optimistic grin for him. “Besides, we’ve been in stickier situations before, right?”

“Oh, yeah?” he uttered sourly, tucking his head in as she tried shoving again. “Like when?”

“Like,” she said, straining as her shoes slowly lost purchase on the roof against her pushing, “the time… when I had to call you to come save me… from that Chrome Dome robot… Or when we were fighting that magic ghost in Chinatown…”

“How about when the Creep captured us up at the cabin, and drained Raph so much he turned into a plant?” he joined in, but assessed her lack of progress for her efforts, and said, “Stop, stop… this isn’t working.”

She released her hold on his shell, pausing to wipe the sweat from her forehead. “Let’s not forget the time you caught me, falling out of a helicopter when I was being abducted by the Kraang!” She gave herself a moment to catch her breath, then turned her attention back to their current problem. “Maybe if I push from the back instead?” she thought aloud, and started squeezing herself through the gap between his plastron and the window sill. He felt the occasional bump and nudge against his torso as she wriggled her way past, and tried to be gentlemanly and not ogle… until she suddenly stopped. “…uhh…uh-oh…”

 _‘Uh-oh’_ is never something you want to hear when you’re already in a bad situation, and it added a sudden heavy gravitational pull on Don’s heart. 

“What do you mean, ‘Uh-oh?!’”

Her struggling increased two-fold. “Nothing!” she called back, unconvincingly. 

“You’re not stuck too, are you?”

She wiggled a bit. “…Let me get back to you on that…”

“Stickier situations, you were saying?”

“What, this? We’ve gotten over bigger obstacles.” She thought for a moment. “What about that time in the D’hoonib market, when we got in trouble for breaking that holo-crystal thing?”

“Ha, right… the great, totally-didn’t-get-us-in-more-trouble tactic of running away because we didn’t have enough cash on hand…” Don sighed and hung his head. “Oh! I’ve got eyes on the problem from here... Your belt-loop is caught on a nail! If you can, lean right… yes… and then lift your hips… good. Now you should be able to clear it.”

April gave a relieved sigh and wiggled and slid the rest of the way through the window. “Thanks for the assist, D.” With no further hesitation, she began throwing her weight into his carapace, with no better result from this angle.

“I can’t believe I’m going to die stuck in a window frame…” he mumbled morosely.

“You’re not gonna die… come on! This is not the worst we’ve been through. Remember when we were fighting Kraang Prime with the Turtle Mech? Or how about when he had me captive and was draining all my energy?”

Don chuckled. “Or when we had to fight our way through a ton of clones to find the real you?”

“Yeah… That wasn’t totally weird, and awkward. Awkweird.”

“Completely and totally awkweird. ” He craned his head back, trying to see her, but not really getting a view of anything but his own shell. “For the record, I absolutely would have figured out which one was the real you if I’d had enough time and means to experiment…”

She snorted. “Sure you would have.” After a couple minutes of pushing so hard she caused wrinkles in the already well-worn carpeting, April paused to catch her breath. “Man. You’re super stuck. Come to think of it, this reminds me of the time my cousin got her head stuck in the banisters at the farmhouse. We pushed and pulled, but we couldn’t budge her, and ended up having to twist her head at a weird angle to get her free.”

Don snapped his fingers. “Angle! That might work! Try pushing up or down on one side of my carapace. That might lever me free.”

April shrugged and crouched beside him, then with her hands against his plastron, shoved upward with all the power in her arms and legs. She pushed with all her might, but Don’s shell still refused to budge. Her strength gave out, and she stepped back, panting.

“Try from above,” Don suggested. “Maybe the extra weight will push me free.”

“You want me to stand on you?”

“Yes. You'll be just like Stephen Hawking, standing on the shoulders of turtles. We’re running out of options here. It’s either this, or we…” He gave a whine full of humiliated dread. “…call my brothers, and get them to lever me out with a crowbar.”

“Alright…” she shrugged begrudgingly and used the windowsill as a step to climb up onto his carapace. Not even the added weight seemed to do anything. “Maybe I should jump up and down a few times?”

“If you think you’ve got good enough foot placement. But be ready to parkour off if I shift out from under you.”

She nodded, then realized he wouldn’t see it. “Right,” she added, prepared her balance, and made a graceful leap upward, coming down on his shell as hard as she could. She repeated the motion twice more, and managed to scuff the wood of the frame a little, but nothing more.

Donnie sighed. “Gravity, you have failed me!”

“Dangit!” April declared, fingering the scooch marks. “This is the first time I wish I weighed more!” She sighed, using him as a bench, in case the weight would maybe work over time. “Well, this can’t get much worse, can it?”

“I suppose it could… I could be disintegrated to atoms—” His thought ground to a sudden halt. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to bring that up.”

April sounded unsure when she said, “It’s… it’s fine. Besides, if Za’noran poofed you to pieces again, at least you’d be out of the window.”

“Yeah, no thanks. That’s a ride I’d rather not go on again.” 

She held out one of her hands, recalling how it had been used against her will to blow Don to cosmic dust. “I’m glad I don’t have that kind of power anymore, even if it would get you out of this situation. And even if I did, who knows if I’d have enough left to bring you back again?”

He nodded. “Best not to attempt, if you can’t predict the outcome.”

She turned, unable to see his head, but at least speaking in the direction of it. “I thought you liked that about science.”

He let out a disheartened laugh. “I’ve come to the conclusion that I like science much less if it’s being applied to me. Still,” he said, holding up a finger, “I’d take it if it would get me out of this sticky situation.”

“Sticky,” she chuckled, then a light bulb went on over her head. “Sticky!” she amended excitedly, hopping down from her perch on him and trotting down the pharmacy’s stairs to the lower room.

Don ducked his head, peering under his shell after her. “April?” he called anxiously.

“Be right back!” her voice carried to him. And indeed, she returned a moment later, carrying a tube of something which she popped the cap open on. The slightly viscous liquid glugged out as she applied it liberally to his shell and the window frame.

“What’re you doing? What is that?”

“Potentially, your way out of there,” she replied, and without delaying by answering any further questions, resumed shoving from underneath to lever him loose.

This time, with the added goo, his shell gave a squeak as it slid away from the frame, and he gave a squawk as he suddenly slipped free and had to catch himself on his hands. He rolled, somersaulting to his feet as he’d originally intended. “Oh thank god…” he uttered in relief, standing and stretching this way and that after the ordeal. 

With a wide grin, he turned back to her as she easily stepped through the window with their bag of acquired goods and shut it behind her. Once it hit the grease, it went down faster than anticipated, and she let out a slight yelp as it banged closed.

“You did it!” he laughed, overjoyed, sweeping her into a grateful hug. “But what in the world did you use?”

“Uhmm…” she started, cheeks flushing slightly, “…uhh… Turtle Wax.”

His brows knit together curiously, but a ping from his phone forced him to postpone any questions. “Leo’s checking in, wondering why we’re so late getting back.”

April threw her hands up as if the answer was obvious. “We were busy making out, duh.”

Donnie bumped his forehead against hers, snickering. “I’m so telling him that!” Text sent, phone stowed, and satchel taken over from April, he started across the rooftop, heading for home, when the cogs in his head working brought his legs to a dead halt. His jaw fell open as more thoughts came together. “This is a pharmacy; they don’t sell Turtle Wax.” He whirled around to stare at her. “You used lube, didn’t you?!”

April blushed an even deeper shade, gripping one arm with the other and rubbing it. “Yeah… maybe…”

Don chuckled appreciatively. “Clever. Master Splinter would say something like…ahem… ‘When in a bind, a resourceful ninja will always find a method to slip away,’” he attempted in a low Japanese accent to mimic their master.

The kunoichi snickered, shaking a finger at him. “Don’t quit your night job. And no more showing off on my account!” She started toward the roof’s edge with her nose in the air. Upright one moment, she was flat on the rooftop the next, landing with an “Oof!” She sat up, unhurt, but working her legs back and forth, bound up in an unspooled coil of wire, all but invisible in the dark. Looking up pleadingly, she said, “Uh… Little help, please?”

Don grinned at her, kneeling to pull the wires loose. “Of course! After all, we have been in stickier situations.”


End file.
